Tag Archives: biomechanics

Aorta: structure to rupture

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Decorative image from a video showing predicted flow through aortic valve and resultant stress in leaflets of valveRegular readers have probably already realised that I have very broad interests in engineering from aircraft and power stations [see ‘Conversations about engineering over dinner and haircut‘ on February 16th, 2022] to nanoparticles interacting with cells [see ‘Fancy a pint of science‘ on April 27th, 2022].  So, it will come as no surprise to hear that I gave a welcome address to a workshop on ‘Aorta: Structure to Rupture‘ last week.  The workshop was organised in Liverpool by one of my colleagues, with sponsorship from the British Heart Foundation, and I was invited to welcome delegates in my capacity as Dean of the School of Engineering.  It was exciting on two levels: speaking, for the first time in more than two years, to an audience who had travelled from around the world to discuss research. And because the topic was closely associated with cardiac dynamics, which is a field that I worked in for nearly twenty years until around 2006.  I was part of an interdisciplinary team modelling the fluid-structure interaction in the aortic valve as it opens when blood is pumped through it by the heart and then closes to prevent back flow into the heart.  The team dispersed after I moved to the USA in 2004.  So speaking to the workshop last week was something of a trip down memory lane for me and led me to look up our last publication in the field.  I was surprised to find it was cited seven times last year.

The image in the thumbnail is a snapshot from a video showing the predicted time-varying distribution of blood flow through the aortic valve and the resultant distribution of stress in the leaflets of the valve during a heart beat.  The simultation is described in our last publication in cardiac dynamics: Carmody, C. J., Burriesci, G., Howard, I. C., & Patterson, E. A.,  An approach to the simulation of fluid–structure interaction in the aortic valve. J. Biomechanics, 39(1), 158-169, 2006.

Fake facts & untrustworthy predictions

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I need to confess to writing a misleading post some months ago entitled ‘In Einstein’s footprints?‘ on February 27th 2019, in which I promoted our 4th workshop on the ‘Validation of Computational Mechanics Models‘ that we held last month at Guild Hall of Carpenters [Zunfthaus zur Zimmerleuten] in Zurich.  I implied that speakers at the workshop would be stepping in Einstein’s footprints when they presented their research at the workshop, because Einstein presented a paper at the same venue in 1910.  However, as our host in Zurich revealed in his introductory remarks , the Guild Hall was gutted by fire in 2007 and so we were meeting in a fake, or replica, which was so good that most of us had not realised.  This was quite appropriate because a theme of the workshop was enhancing the credibility of computer models that are used to replicate the real-world.  We discussed the issues surrounding the trustworthiness of models in a wide range of fields including aerospace engineering, biomechanics, nuclear power and toxicology.  Many of the presentations are available on the website of the EU project MOTIVATE which organised and sponsored the workshop as part of its dissemination programme.  While we did not solve any problems, we did broaden people’s understanding of the issues associated with trustworthiness of predictions and identified the need to develop common approaches to support regulatory decisions across a range of industrial sectors – that’s probably the theme for our 5th workshop!

The MOTIVATE project has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 754660 and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation under contract number 17.00064.

The opinions expressed in this blog post reflect only the author’s view and the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Image: https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/Zunfthaus-Zur-Zimmerleuten-Wiederaufbauprojekt-steht/story/30815219